Modern telephone systems, such as a landline telephone or a wireless cellular telephone, include the ability to leave a voicemail message for the owner or user of the telephone. Typically, a caller to the phone number of that phone will hear a voicemail greeting telling the caller to leave a message. After the greeting, the caller has the opportunity to leave a message which is recorded on a voicemail system. In certain embodiments, the voicemail is recorded locally on a storage device which is part of a telephone or the voicemail may be recorded on a voicemail server or system maintained in the infrastructure, such as a voicemail server maintained in the infrastructure of a public telephone carrier, such as AT&T or Verizon or Verizon Wireless. These voicemails are recorded and maintained for later use by the owner or operator of the telephone device for which the voicemail account was established. For example, the user of the telephone device may connect to the voicemail system through a telephone call to the voicemail system to listen to one or more voicemails stored at the voicemail system.
Certain current systems employ a visual voicemail user interface to provide information about voicemails without requiring a user to listen to each of the voicemails. FIG. 1 shows an example of a user interface for visual voicemail on an iPhone from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. This visual voicemail system includes a voicemail user interface display region 10 which displays one or more voicemails such as voicemails 11, 12, and 13. Information for each of these voicemails can include a user name, such as Jenny, or a telephone number and other designations. In addition, the date the voicemail was received is also included. For example, it can be seen that the voicemail 11 was received on Dec. 28, 2009; further information about this voicemail, if available, can be obtained by selecting the information button 9 which is one of the user interface elements in voicemail user interface display region 10. Each voicemail can include information button 9, which when selected will display further information about the voicemail. Each voicemail includes control element 8 which may be used by a user to select the voicemail to cause it to playback or to pause its playback. As shown in FIG. 1, no voicemail has been selected; it can also be seen that there is no information about the duration of each voicemail. In this particular implementation, information about the duration of a voicemail does not appear until the voicemail is selected.
A user can select the voicemail by touching or otherwise selecting the voicemail to cause the playback of the voicemail and also to display two indicators which together show the duration or length of a voicemail. As shown in FIG. 2, voicemail 11 has been selected which causes control element 8 to change into control element 8A which is now a pause button, which if selected will stop the playback of the voicemail now being played. The playback of voicemail 11 is also shown by timeline 14 which includes a current time indicator 15 which can be manipulated by the user. Played time indicator 7A and remaining time indicator 7B together show the total duration of the voicemail, which in this embodiment appears only after a particular voicemail is selected for playback. Played time indicator 7A shows how much of the voicemail has already been played and remaining time indicator 7B shows how much of the voicemail remains to be played. A user can, by selecting the current time indicator 15, move to a different position in the voicemail by moving current time indicator 15 along the timeline 14. In the case of the example shown in FIG. 2, voicemail 11 has a total duration of 15 seconds. Once a voicemail has been selected, the user can select either the call back button 16 or the delete button 17 in order to either call back the caller who left the voicemail or to delete the voicemail, respectively.
While the user interface shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 provides many of the advantages of a visual voicemail system, it does not provide information about the duration of a voicemail until after it has been selected.